Phil Collins, Elton John, and Gloria Estefan dominated Adult Contemporary radio back in the 1980s and '90s, yet have disappeared from modern radio. Seemingly, the only time you ever hear them is at the grocery store or your local CVS. This blog remembers the music, the stories and the quirky characters from my days working in Adult Contemporary radio.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Bananarama "Venus"
Her official job title was "Sales Assistant", but no one was really sure what she did all day because she didn't assist sales. Instead, she focused on her side hustle: creating horoscopes for her clients. Don't dare call her a psychic, because she claimed she wasn't. Her world revolved around making predictions based on the sun, moon, your touch, and so on. Sometimes I'd pass her in the hallway and she'd grab my hand. "You're not sleeping," she would tell me. I wasn't sleeping. "You need to focus on country and western," she once shared. I still don't know what that means. For Christmas one year, she put together an entire booklet filled with day-by-day predictions for my mom and it was eerily spot-on. Some of us feared talking with her because we thought she knew when bad stuff was supposed to happen. One of the radio shows even used her on-air for a horoscope bit. All the while, management looked the other way (for about eight years!) as she focused on doing everything except her job. Eventually, she announced her retirement. Last I heard, she parlayed her side hustle into a full-time gig doing palm reading and horoscopes on cruise ships.